Seafloor Observatories

Matabos, Marjolaine; Best, Mairi; Blandin, J.; Hoeberechts, Maia; Juniper, S. Kim; Pirenne, B.; Robert, Katleen; Ruhl, Henry A.; Sarrazin, Jozée; Vardaro, Michael

doi:10.1002/9781118332535.ch14

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The long-term acquisition of high-resolution infra-annual time series of faunal and environmental changes is therefore essential to gain further knowledge on factors driving community dynamics in these ecosystems. The development of deep-sea observatories now offers this possibility (Matabos et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term monitoring reveals unprecedented stability of a vent mussel assemblage on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Audenhaege

Matabos

Brind’Amour

et al. 2022

Progress in Oceanography

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-term monitoring reveals unprecedented stability of a vent mussel assemblage on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Audenhaege

Matabos

Brind’Amour

et al. 2022

Progress in Oceanography

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“…Platforms that integrate ocean sensors and operate over a long time at sea can be fixed, e.g., surface buoys, moorings and landers, or mobile such as Argo floats, crawlers, surface vehicles, gliders and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) (Aguzzi et al, 2019;Rountree et al, 2020). These platforms can be cabled with power and data transmission ensured from the shore -but unchangeable location strongly constrains the cable route and price -, or wireless with battery and data storage capabilities dimensioned according to the duration of the foreseen deployment on board the seabed station (Matabos et al, 2016). The future directions on platforms' development need to address a number of limitations highlighted through the experience acquired over a decade of operation (also see Rountree et al, 2020): i) The operational cost is high, partly because underwater vehicles are required for maintenance operation to place the sensor with precision and perform underwater connection; ii) the time between the maintenance operations is limited due to requirement for sensor calibration and, in case of wireless system, for energy pack and data storage replacement; iii) the spatial coverage is limited to the close surrounding of the seabed station; iv) new regulation will urge for new deployment processes with low environmental footprint; v) a larger number and variety of sensors are fundamental for multidisciplinary approaches and the amount of energy and volume of data storage needed keeps increasing.…”

Section: Sensing and Monitoring Platformsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating Multidisciplinary Observations in Vent Environments (IMOVE): Decadal Progress in Deep-Sea Observatories at Hydrothermal Vents

et al. 2022

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The unique ecosystems and biodiversity associated with mid-ocean ridge (MOR) hydrothermal vent systems contrast sharply with surrounding deep-sea habitats, however both may be increasingly threatened by anthropogenic activity (e.g., mining activities at massive sulphide deposits). Climate change can alter the deep-sea through increased bottom temperatures, loss of oxygen, and modifications to deep water circulation. Despite the potential of these profound impacts, the mechanisms enabling these systems and their ecosystems to persist, function and respond to oceanic, crustal, and anthropogenic forces remain poorly understood. This is due primarily to technological challenges and difficulties in accessing, observing and monitoring the deep-sea. In this context, the development of deep-sea observatories in the 2000s focused on understanding the coupling between sub-surface flow and oceanic and crustal conditions, and how they influence biological processes. Deep-sea observatories provide long-term, multidisciplinary time-series data comprising repeated observations and sampling at temporal resolutions from seconds to decades, through a combination of cabled, wireless, remotely controlled, and autonomous measurement systems. The three existing vent observatories are located on the Juan de Fuca and Mid-Atlantic Ridges (Ocean Observing Initiative, Ocean Networks Canada and the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory). These observatories promote stewardship by defining effective environmental monitoring including characterizing biological and environmental baseline states, discriminating changes from natural variations versus those from anthropogenic activities, and assessing degradation, resilience and recovery after disturbance. This highlights the potential of observatories as valuable tools for environmental impact assessment (EIA) in the context of climate change and other anthropogenic activities, primarily ocean mining. This paper provides a synthesis on scientific advancements enabled by the three observatories this last decade, and recommendations to support future studies through international collaboration and coordination. The proposed recommendations include: i) establishing common global scientific questions and identification of Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) specific to MORs, ii) guidance towards the effective use of observatories to support and inform policies that can impact society, iii) strategies for observatory infrastructure development that will help standardize sensors, data formats and capabilities, and iv) future technology needs and common sampling approaches to answer today’s most urgent and timely questions.

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“…Evolving from single-station cabled seafloor installations (Butler et al 2000;Petitt et al 2002;Romanowicz et al 2006), ambitious multi-station, multi-instrument cabled arrays have been rooted on the seafloor off the coasts of Japan (Hirata et al 2002;Shinohara et al 2014), the Canadian Northeast Pacific (Barnes et al 2013;Matabos et al 2016), and Oregon (Cowles et al 2010;Toomey et al 2014;Kelley et al 2016) for the longterm monitoring of the oceanic environment from the shelf to the deep ocean. These installations provide high-quality data with low latency, but they require massive upfront costs, demand costly maintenance, are limited by cables and, being permanent, cannot be rapidly reinstalled or reassigned in the case of developing seismic crises (e.g.…”

Section: Introduction and Historical Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recording earthquakes for tomographic imaging of the mantle beneath the South Pacific by autonomous MERMAID floats

Simon¹,

Irving²,

Simons³

2022

Preprint

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We present the first 16 months of data returned from a mobile array of 16 freely-floating diving instruments, named MERMAID for Mobile Earthquake Recording in Marine Areas by Independent Divers, launched in French Polynesia in late 2018. Our 16 are a subset of the 50 MERMAIDs deployed over a number of subsequent cruises in this vast and understudied oceanic province as part of the collaborative South Pacific Plume Imaging and Modeling (SPPIM) project, under the aegis of the international EarthScope-Oceans consortium. Our objective is the hydroacoustic recording, from within the oceanic water column, of the seismic wavefield generated by earthquakes worldwide, and the nearly real-time transmission by satellite of these data, collected directly above and on the periphery of the South Pacific Superswell. This region, characterized by anomalously elevated oceanic crust and myriad seamounts, is believed to be the surface expression of a deeply-rooted mantle plume. Tomographically imaging Earth's mantle under the South Pacific with data from these novel instruments requires a careful examination of the earthquake-to-MERMAID travel-times of the high-frequency P-wave detections within the windows selected for reporting by the discrimination algorithms on board. We discuss a workflow suitable for a fast-growing mobile sensor database to pick the relevant arrivals, match them to known earthquakes in the global earthquake catalogs, calculate their travel-time residuals with respect to global seismic reference models, characterize their quality, and estimate their uncertainty. We detail seismicity rates as recorded by MERMAID over 16 months, break these statistics down by magnitude to quantify the completeness of our catalog, and discuss magnitude-versus-distance relations of detectability for our network. The projected lifespan of an individual MERMAID is five years, allowing us to estimate the final size of the data set that will be available for future study. To prove their utility for seismic tomography we compare the MERMAID data quality against "traditional" land seismometers and their low-cost Raspberry Shake counterparts, using waveforms recovered from instrumented island stations in the geographic neighborhood of our floats. Finally, we provide the first analyses of travel-time anomalies for the new ray paths sampling the mantle under the South Pacific over the first 16 months of operation of our array.

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Seafloor Observatories

Cited by 9 publications

References 42 publications

Long-term monitoring reveals unprecedented stability of a vent mussel assemblage on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Long-term monitoring reveals unprecedented stability of a vent mussel assemblage on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Integrating Multidisciplinary Observations in Vent Environments (IMOVE): Decadal Progress in Deep-Sea Observatories at Hydrothermal Vents

Recording earthquakes for tomographic imaging of the mantle beneath the South Pacific by autonomous MERMAID floats

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